Notices by Katie Fenn (katiefenn@front-end.social)

After six months on the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres, I’ve decided to give the Continental Contact Urban tyres a go.

I’ve been pleased with the impressive puncture protection from the Marathon tyres, but found they ruined the ride quality to the point I lost trust in the bike.

The difference was really noticeable. The bike felt nervous, and unstable over cracks in the road. I definitely felt less confident in braking hard when I had my crash earlier in the year.

It felt like it was time to sacrifice a bit of puncture protection for ride quality.

Can almost hear the big Channel 4 kaiju

Finding bells for modern road and mountain bikes is surprisingly difficult. The handlebars on my new bike are 36.6mm oversized at the clamp, and the largest diameter bell clamp you can find is 31.8mm.

No wonder nobody uses them anymore - but I will die on this hill. Bells are absolutely essential.

An incredible turnout in Sheffield today to protest the historic miscarriage of justice in the UK Supreme Court.

Made my heart sing to bump into friends there. Was in tears by the end of it.

A day we’ll all remember 🏳️⚧️

(photo: Now Then magazine)

@goatsarah Even more embarrassing!

@goatsarah She didn’t even get the right station. Imagine confusing Euston and Kings Cross 🙄

@goatsarah @christineburns Meanwhile, they were selling dual redundant flight speed indicators, a key safety feature which marginally increased costs but would have prevented the disaster, was being flogged as a premium optional extra.

Post McDonnell Douglas Boeing is a fractal of corporate horrors.

@goatsarah I’ve removed it from my phone. I’ve set up Buffer so that I can post to both BlueSky and Mastodon, but not see my feed.

The doomscrolling is real and corrosive to my health.

Better to gather news from Discord servers instead.

@caolan Have been looking forward to this mission for 25 years 😄

Capitalism isn’t a market of retailers offering a choice of clothing for everyone.

Capitalism is one supplier of clothing for fat and tall people selling their clothing through every other retailer so that you have no choice anymore and shops only have to actually sell clothes for skinny people.

On Monday, the Scottish NHS are going to revoke the right of trans people in Scotland to self-refer to their gender identity service. They will have to convince a GP to refer them.

No clinical reason has been given. No trans people have apparently been consulted. We only know because this information was leaked ahead of time.

If you’re thinking of a referral to a Scottish GIC, do so TODAY.

https://x.com/PhilosophyTube/status/1821598135161917846

@goatsarah Would love to see Tesla’s summon feature try to solve this one. No, really, it would be hilarious

@christineburns @goatsarah Honestly in terms of the general electorate, there’s no votes in anti-trans policies.

If there is political maths being done, it’s all about the influence to be gained among people who are active politically, both within parties and without.

Terfs are over-represented in political parties.

@goatsarah My feeling is that the Cass report has given politicians in the “centre ground”, the ones that we knew we couldn’t trust, a cover story to move away from supporting trans people on this. The Wes Streetings who were phoning in their allyship all along.

I’d be happy to be corrected, but nobody who seriously campaigns for better trans healthcare is happy about the proposed ban, it’s the chancers who don’t stand for anything that have abandoned us.

@goatsarah That said, I do agree that DIYing has been somewhat pushed underground. Having made the decision to switch to the NHS in the mid-2000s (I was transitioning at university and broke), I’ve always got my prescriptions from an NHS GP.

I wouldn’t even know where to start with DIY, which is playing on my mind, I admit.

@goatsarah Honestly, money isn’t why they do it. If it was only money that people like Elon and Joanne wanted, we’d have never heard from them again. They only wanted more power and influence.

It’s what happens to people when all their most fabulous dreams come true, but they realise they still live in a world that they despise, and which hates them back in equal measure.

@emilygorcenski That’s true. It shows that they were organised ahead of time when it came out. They’d briefed sympathetic and influential people, and made sure that critics were spending the whole day reading the damn thing while they were giving interviews.

In fact, I think the fact that the earliest criticisms were based off of an easily refuted, leaked press briefing really hurt us.

We should be doing the same - organise off the platform, and channel it through Twitter.

Last week the LGBTIQA+ Greens, the officially affiliated liberation group for the Green Party of England and Wales, lost its Twitter account for unknown reasons. It was suspended. It was appealed. The appeal went nowhere.

I cannot state enough that trans people need to urgently divest from Twitter. The network is actively hostile to us now.

Maintaining a presence is fine, but we must move the centre of gravity for organising onto other platforms.

I’ve been off Twitter for two weeks now, and I’ve gained a bit of perspective about how much organising still happens on the platform.

The Twitter thread is still our primary source of news and information. All this becomes inaccessible the moment you move off Twitter. And as more and more people quit Twitter, our community is fracturing and becoming less powerful.

I think this really hit us hard when the Cass report was published. Our adversaries are organised, and we are scattered.